Mike Sangster, vice president of business development for TotalFinaElf in the United States, told attendees at the Resource Development Council for Alaska’s annual conference Nov. 21 that his company has named Jack Bergeron as manager of Alaska operations. Bergeron is relocating from Houston to Anchorage in January.

The company, Sangster said, is opening an Alaska office after the first of the year. An exact location has not yet been chosen.

TotalFinaElf re-entered Alaska with its successful bid for 20 leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in June. Sangster said the company is interested in partnering with other NPR-A leaseholders to explore and develop its leases.

TotalFinaElf, he said, is the fifth largest oil company in the world.

Evergreen Resources finishes seventh well

Evergreen Resources President and CEO Mark Sexton said Nov. 21 that his company had just finished drilling seven of eight wells in two four-well pilot projects at the Pioneer unit in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough. He told attendees at the Resource Development Council for Alaska’s annual conference Nov. 21, that Evergreen was encountering “between 80 and 100 feet of coal” per well.

The first well was spud Oct. 28.

“We’ll have all the wells drilled up by the end of this month and we’ll be fracture stimulating one pilot early next year in the first quarter and the other pilot in the second quarter,” Sexton told analysts the week before the RDC conference.